Archive for March, 2010

It’s hard to put your finger on Felicie Vachon’s style. Bold in places, muted in others, her work speaks mostly in whispers but with the occasional shriek. Spending time with Felicie’s work won’t necessarily lead to a unifying theory of the artist, but it’s without doubt a fascinating way to expand your visual horizons.

Witness, for example, this series of photographs based on the phonetic similarity of the words “leaving” and “living”, posters illustrating the damaging effects of alcohol on the brain, and drop, a magazine about a simpler life. The artist is also a part of the ubud collective of artists, consisting of 6 actors, 6 musicians, 1 chef, 1 artist, 3 video artists, and herself. More work is here.

There are countless ways to assess a work of art. One method we ascribe to is the “Whoa Dude” factor. If a piece of art brings forceful thoughts of “Whoa Dude” into your head, that piece of art can be said to possess serious intellectual and aesthetic strengths.

“Whoa Dude” is what we think of when we look at Joey Ryken’s work. Ryken makes drawings, installations, moving pictures and sculptures, as well as other, unclassifiable works. “My work is based on an attempt to connect personal anecdote, occult ritual/symbology, and references to both popular culture and sub-cultures, dismantling them through shambolic mimicry,” writes the artist. To this we can only nod with a look of studied concentration. This is art you can spend a long time looking at.

Anyone with an ideologically confusing adolescence won’t want to miss Vanessa Davis’“Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon”, a coming-of-age bat mitzvah tale rendered in comics (sample line: “My party didn’t have a theme, but we did have kind of a mean-spirited caricaturist.”)

Vanessa inked, colored and captioned a comics column for Tablet magazine for a little over a year, gathering a loyal base of fans along the way. In an interview with Jim Linderman she discusses that column as well as Archie comics, the influences of female cartoonists on her work, and her desires to decorate pots, design wallpaper, and more!

Keep yourself updated on Vanessa’s adventures and work here. We can’t wait to see where she’ll go next.

Maxwell Holyoke-Hirsch has created illustrations and images for everything from old guards like The New Yorker to WLYS favorites GOOD Magazine.

Holyoke-Hirsch does gorgeous, risky things with color, and his illustrations are both expressive and precise—a thorny balance to strike. The artist’s positive energy and enthusiasm are also infectious in the best possible way: check out his blog for proof, as well as this visual diary of his process, easily one of the most articulate (yet: wordless!) accounts of creativity we’ve seen on the internets.

How do we know what the world is like? As mainstream media talking heads attempt to explain things in abstract, flatly spoken proclamations, the value of rogue photojournalists and artists like Livia Corona rises exponentially. For instance, consider the following fact: Mexico is building an average of 2,500 units of low-income public housing every day. As a statistic, sure, that sounds kind of impressive, but it’d likely slip from your mind without a second thought if it weren’t for Corona’s illuminating images. For the past few years, she’s been documenting the human impact of these otherworldly suburban tracts in a series called Two Million Homes for Mexico, and the results are breathtaking.

Nicholas Venaglia takes photos, makes zines, takes trips, blogs about art, reads books, sketches, makes collages and writes. He’s a guy with creativity sparking out the tips of his fingers like mini superhero lightning bolts. You probably couldn’t stop him from documenting his aesthetic fixations if you tried, and you wouldn’t want to, anyways. The photographs are perfectly observed snapshots that transform the mundane stuff of everyday life into profoundly eloquent visions. Take a long look here.

Until Danny Espinoza gets his website up, we’re gonna have to settle for obsessive viewing of his flickr page. Espinoza’s drawings and illustrations have a lightness and humor that we can’t get enough of. He’s like that kid in high school chemistry class that you always wanted to pass notes with. We’re enchanted and intrigued.

Jane collects vintage matchbox covers from (mainly) Eastern Europe in the 1950s and 1960s. “My interest in matchbox labels lies primarily in the design,” she writes, “but also the concept that these small images can communicate to a large number of people.”

The images that make up Jane’s rad collection demonstrate the possibilities of modern design as well as the ability of labels to speedily convey propaganda and public service announcements alike. We love the old-school East German trucks the best, though the geometrically-abstracted Polish dancing couples are a close second.

Daredevil Thor Drake, the man responsible for some of the craziest mini-bike stunts in Jackass Number Two, is living the dream. What kid doesn’t want to grow up to do crazy tricks, weld together trampolines and bounce down the street? Thanks Lance, for allowing us to vicariously live like Thor– if only for a few minutes.